Creativity 4.0. Empowering creativity in the digital era

Abstract

In the 21st Century we are witnessing a radical transformation of society, primarily due to the introduction of a wealth of new devices, sensors, robots, and applications that are changing how people process information, behave, and socialise. The digital era and its technologies are having a profound impact especially on the digitally enhanced generation who are growing up with digital habits (TV, cell phones, video games, etc.) which are required to develop new competencies and skills among which human creativity is the most important one. The design education system is struggling to keep up with the demands of these new digital challenges. It has, therefore, become essential for design research to understand the impact of digital technologies on the creative process to develop an appropriate training model for the next digital generation of designers representing the actors of a near future. The objective of this paper is to briefly present the Creativity 4.0 model framed as part of the methodology used to identify the most crucial factors that influence creativity in the digital era. The model allows to explore some condition brought by the digital revolution that could enable or inhibit those factors and that could be of interest for the design educators’ community.